From the Bryant Room Archives
By Myrna Sloam ©May/June 2005
A View of the Mackay Estate by Stewart Donaldson: Part VI, The Mansion and Gardens
NOTE: The following is the sixth in an ongoing series, taken from the reminiscences of Stewart Donaldson (1907-1994) who was raised on the Clarence H. Mackay estate in what is now East Hills. The complete text can be found in the Bryant Library Local History Collection.
The ceiling of the main ballroom was two stories high. It was a huge room. In fact, everything about this mansion was huge--the front door was enormous, the front hall was large. When you entered the house and if you turned left, and walked ahead, you came to the main stairs on your left. Hanging over this stairway was a gigantic chandelier of cut glass- it was huge- that’s the only way I can describe it. The fireplace in the main ball room was so large [that] at Christmas time they would build a scaffold inside the chimney for Mr. Pietsch to stand on. He would dress up like Santa Claus and wait until signaled, then come down a ladder with his bag of toys to be distributed to the children. And that was big.
As you walked to the back of the ballroom, on your right was the entrance to the main dining room, and beyond that, you went into the pantry. On the left of the main ballroom were more rooms. I don’t remember what was in them, but one was a music room at one time [that] was changed into a room housing some of the robes of the Pope and other religious things. [Mr.] Mackay being Irish Catholic, went in for this sort of thing.
When you returned to the front hall and turned to the right, you again came to the main stairway on your left. But, if you went straight ahead you came to the old conservatory and then out at the west end of the house. Then, for several hundred feet straight ahead of you to the west, was the Italian gardens- all methodically laid out with white pebble walks, designs in boxwood and each portion edged with grass.
There were three levels from the main house. You walked down a set of steps to the first terrace, then on to the west, to another set of steps which curved down around a small pool. The big pool and fountain was on the terrace you were just leaving. The last terrace was bordered with evergreen trees and at certain spots along each side of the garden were small niches or recessed in which [there] were statues. At night these were lit up by spot lights in the woods fastened to high supports. Each statue had its own spot, a sort of soft light shown on them. It was beautiful on a moonlit night to see the statues glow, so to speak. At the west end of the garden, on each corner, was a statue of a life size horse and man holding it. One of these horses is now (1962) at the Roslyn High School and the other stands on its old base in someone’s backyard on Harbor Hill. These were a copy of the “Horses of Marly.”
The rose trellis on the north side of the garden was another example of how immense everything on this place was. This trellis was about 15 feet high, built in a half moon shape. I would guess it was about 75-80 feet around. On the corners were two large baskets (at the top that is) which were filled with cut flowers. This was only on special occasions, of course. I can remember Kay Mackay’s [oldest daughter of Clarence and Katherine] wedding. Wadley and Smythe of New York decorated the mansion for this affair and hundreds of roses were tied to the trellis and the two large baskets were filled with gladioli. In fact, the wedding picture was taken in front of this trellis. Kay married Kenneth O’Brien. The railings along the side of the gardens on the walls and from terrace to terrace were made of stone, a granite, I think. Underneath the Italian gardens was a cellar and sub-cellar. In the cellar were electric pumps and maze of pipes and the lead covered electric cables to supply water to the fountain and the lights around the gardens. In the sub-cellar were the large water storage tanks to supply the water to the pool and fountain. The fountain water would spurt up in the air for a height of probably 40 feet, maybe more, then fall back into a round pool. In the pool were life size men riding large fish made of bronze. Then there was another half moon pool just below the second terrace as you came down the stairs. They curved around either side of it and had a small stream of water flowing into it out of the wall. This pool and the fountain had colored lights under water which made it look so pretty at night.
To be continued….
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